The Irony Warrior - by Wirln

(if this somehow gets viral or whatever, i made this. http://steamcommunity.com/id/wirlno/)

It is theorized that we are in midst of an antebellum, as drastic rain and thunder rain down one half of the rocky valley, soon to encroach the rest that follow in the daylight. Animals of natural breeds and mutations - whatever mix populates this place more - are herding to the southernmost, competing against one anonther in a topsy turby mass migration that may leave some young ones with fractured limbs as they keep up, and some old ones to be dropped during the exodus into the moldy crust of bagged flesh which they were well on their way to becoming to begin with.

I watch these scenes from afar, on a steel observation deck with many, many others, meant for monitoring such a dreadful and insidious venture. Scientists that have come to study here have found more than they could handle. In the far out distance, you can see it. Large pillars of industrial class and stature bombard into the ground, causing ripples in the air and in the subsequent quakes that they cause, dispensing dozens upon dozens of artificial locusts that perpetuate through the clouds and through the tunneling girth far below. More and more as the treble increases, you hear overlay of panic and despair from well catered fools who sought no recourse. Unfortunate for them. For me, I shall be pleading with the powers of my gods, and their abilities to transport me to the other end of this world.

I turn the corner, and make the proper omens. But as I encrypt the starting sigil, using a plastic blue sharpie with blood on the tip to emphasize the effect, a being of large mass, bulk and shoddy armor wear prances between my wingspan and forces me to recoil back three feet and a half.

As I stare my head up, the contrasting thunder and lightning mixed with the sunny glare gives me a soar on my eyes, but I recognize the helmet shape. I also recognize the cauldron-sized pauldrons, and the speech impediment filtered by vox. I also recognize the speech pattern.

"You; you must be the one known as Cottonwolf." Says the Astartes. As he says this with inflections that chisel the air, I also begin to notice his layout: It's no mistake, then. He must be one and the same with the one I've had to kill this past month. There are more....perplexing additions to his outfit though, mainly the jarring spikes and red skulls.

There's no reason for me to give a lie to someone who's made the effort to find something as daunting and under the rose as myself, I too would feel rather distasted to have the effort wasted if the shoes were reversed. "You are correct, I am the Doff known as Cottonwolf, high pointer of the Angra Om Ya."

There's another tongue-in-cheek silence, but in the sense that there's a restraint of malice. He clearly has some form of malcontent with my being, his heavy breathing would be sight of that, and his fidgeting hands - I did not know a Goliath would have that form of composure. However, he seems to reside this in a way that leaves neither of us up to bat. He turns to the side, speculating on the events I have so described. He also turns to my sigil, and basks in full view of it. It takes a minute and a half for him to conjure up a proper response.

"Ah. I see you are using dark magicks to evacuate this place. That won't do. If my own... masters, cursed be they, cannot grasp an escape, I suspect neither could yours. Since we are at the mercy of whatever is coming, you should join me for one dab of liquor down near the local pub. We'll be closer to the carnage, but since we're without a means to escape, we'll already be close soon enough as we remain here. Nonetheless, I will begin the walk down."

As he walks down, I suffice he has a point; The Angra do not respond as immediately to my claims as they've in the past, when I first arrive. In the worst case scenario, they will receive my communications halfway as my body is being mutilated by hard gnats with teeth, swarming all over my soon creviced body. Besides that, where would there be to go if they had? Another vacant space on this earth? I shudder, imagining alternatives.

That's it then. I follow the accursed astartes down the route, as the rest watch the world burn.

--

As we arrive towards the bay area, with small chirping frogs making their final morning quench - unbeknownst to them, there's a sticky fog in the air that does not resonate well at all with the Astartes filtering system. I can hear it from all the meters away from him, the tore and wear of the mask showing itself evident as the gags and coughs that come off his belching voice fret through the air, the vox making a sad echo. It is a very serious disrepair, and you can hear it in the sound. Other points of fade come with the condition of his armor unit, with hard areas scorched off by what I can assume to be heavy plasma fire and rough collision with sword jabs. There's also a broken bag acquitted with the armor sector near his waistband, far too damaged to be utilized traditionally.

But besides his counterpoints, there are still some quality aspects to his person; He stands upright, nine feet tall in goliath armor, even in the encumbrance of his worn person. Whatever maintenance he's long discarded from the kit to his armor he must have adapted to his weapon, which seems to be a highly modified, mobile chainsaw in vain of a sword. He is decorated with spikes and other manifests of protection that bask over the deteriorating shape of his armor, posing images of metal plating and stainless steel that contrasts the conventions of old. His mask, especially, is a fashion statement I wish I've seen on more of his ilk. It is a plastered crusaders helmet, the mask of a knight, that bends over his face in a way that makes him look like the formidable opponent I have so expected, and failed to notice, of most Astartes present within the area.

We continue to walk down a patched gravel road, with three buildings shaped out infront of us. One of them appears to be a mailing station, the other a dress shop, and the third; The pub. The valley hasn't been especially kind on the pub, which has been retrofitted with bitter dry wood. It looks as creaky as it so sounds, for we enter the small establishment. The Astartes is particularly cruel on the entrance. Instead of walking through swiveling doors, he takes both hands and in an act of power rips them far into the distance behind us. Looking back at it's distance, I again notice the pillars of en-mass destruction, causing locusts and whatever else to dispatch from it's core. While they remain miles, miles apart from us, it's tantalizing. It is a fate that beckons to drive near us, where we can only wait. I wave it off- the thoughts drive me mad, I need my focus.

We walk in, noticing the hard dulled wood and the bent out of shape shelves and drink components shattered into glass across the floor, now serving mildew instead of vapid fantasy. Some snakes have made a trench in here, though there now makes two more.

"Find a seat. I will be meandering on the bar counter itself, not that many would be using it after today." The Astartes makes his lift on the bar counter, as he shimmies off his metal plating. Damn, I think myself, they /are/ humans. The face I see infront of me is intrinsically a human one, with short dark brown hair, blue eyes, and a small bit of freckle display. It is very odd seeing this form of facial record on an Astartes, he very likely reminds me of men I've tried to indoctrinated outside of worthless conventions.

I settle on an old rocking chair, falling and stagnant in the corner. I haul it up with my muscles - I could have levitated it up, but I've been deterred that these Astartes are not too friendly to seeing occult business in action, regardless of alignment - and place it to the front position of the monster, who is already tampering with what I am led to believe is a toxic amount of jargon; a full barrel of whiskey, awkwardly hosting it above his lip and chumming it down. When he sets it to the side, he gives me a new look; Intrigue. There's still the breathing aspect, but it's more of a rancher not knowing what animal has set into it's ranch.

"We were not built to withstand pleasantries, Cottonwolf, so let us get our formalities in check at this moment; I am known, quaintly nowadays, as Captain Amathigg Hesterro of the Iron Warriors Astartes Legion, which at my time are servants of the ruinous powers. Given the vague testament of that name, you can instead refer it as 'Chaos', if you so prefer." No response of merit, nor question is given. I believe he has more to say.

When it comes apparent that I'm giving him lease, he continues, gradually. "I hear by rumor that you are a marked man of sorts. The people here give you reputation. Curious understudy. Shifty manipulator. Sin eater.. Decadent Interloper. The more deranged I've interrogated, the more descriptions become progressively interesting. I see it as fruitful. It's helped me to understand your person, which I've been meaning to for quite some time now. You've surely grasped my interest, if not everyone elses...I'm not here to humble you, though."

He bends his massive frame, which hunkers with clunky noise and shifting parts, the eye contact continuing to glare upon me. His tone derives as softer, yet deeper, and with coated breath dwinding on my person.

"I do not like to cite myself as an eavesdropper, but..from around the bush, I've managed to garner some unnerving press. I was told, quite bluntly, that six months ago you and another of my chapter from long in the past, had fallen into a skirmish of sorts, leading to a strung battle in a small pub area not unlike where we are now. I was also told that it ended in you /killing/ him, full stop."

There's a pause, but not for me to react. He pauses so he can take another swig of the barrel, causing him to become a tad more inebriated. I briefly consider blowing the bottom of the barrel and ensuing combat, per the whiles of my instinct tell me to. We in the Angra Om Ya do not subside on petty instincts, however, at least from first impulse. I subside, and wait for his next word. The assumption is that he wants vengeance for his fallen brother, but maybe, maybe this will pan out in a different direction.

As he swipes off his lip, gives a small churning with his tongue, he proceeds; "I have lived a very long militant career, Cottonwolf - Or Doff Cottonwolf, if you're a fan of the full slip. I have seen and engaged in many acts of malice previously thought incomprehensible, as have I witnessed countless events that defy nature itself within a vortex that has dispatched reason to a bare minimum. I cannot claim what I've heard to be valid - that is for you to tell /me/ - but I would have no trouble believing it. As such, I will entail only the ending blow - the one that killed, and as I've heard it;

You evaporated into an ominous gas of dark origin, and phased into the air unit of the Astartes mask, which siphoned the air flow of my brethren and caused him to choke out in a sputtering spastic mess. This is after you have succeeded in giving him mortal blows to the body in countless, mystical ways that he might not have had the technology or medical support to repair himself had he survived proper.

In his retaliation, he took out two krak grenades from his inner sanctum, and flicked them off in the attempt of suicide, which he theorized would rid you off his coil, and would ensure that the battle would end in a mass stalemate. As you fretted, you made a cunning recourse by jutting through an open injury, cracked through the right arm cauldron, and migrated down the thorax to the vantage point, breaking through the weakened state of the Astartes limbs, and body strength, and seamed out the crack just as the grenades started to detonate, pushing the compressed matter that you became to the far end of the bar, leaving you to survive yet in a wicked state. The Astartes died believing he had rid you.

Instead, you used the remaining strength of your own to conjure an unusual fire, which burned the Astartes and sent his remains to a netherworld of your choosing, or the bits that managed to transcend before you chanted awful forms of treachery, and had the building crushed to secede evidence of the act in the first place - which, had the sole remainder drunk in the room not noticed this and hid to the ventilation shaft of the bar, would have worked. The problem here, however, is that I cannot take the word of a drunk on my lonesome."

His form again takes shape, bending over me. He looks at me while I remain dormant, rocking in the chair, paying attention to him.

"I want the validation, Cottonwolf. Did you or did you not kill my Brother?"

--

When he looms over me, he tries to give an additional spur of aggression, despite his reasonably lax if not cautious attitude. He grows readily impatient by snarl, that or he's now realized the smoldering heat of this pub in contrast to the cold airborne flavor of the outside atmosphere, which he has brought himself a closer audience by removing his helm.

Either way, the pleasantries were not wasted on him, thus they shall not wasted on me. After seconds of determining, I decide to applaud his efforts for wasting his time to reach me by at least giving him closure to the ordeal.

"You are correct, Captain Hesterro. I have met an Astartes worthy of your stature and design - if not recently off the chopping block, so to speak - and engaged him about six to seven months prior to this conversation. Though when I met him, mind that I was in the middle of a secluded work session."

"And this work issue was important enough to flay him mid process? Nevermind, I'm making assumptions based on information I have no context with; do continue."

"Right. I will not give away the purpose of this session solely by the oath of my masters, but I will say it involved scoping a particular personnel. A novice barkeep, of sorts. The only one in the area. She was to patronize the booze of the settlement and server it proper with enhanced modifications, and while the berries were still ripe enough to mix in.
Forgive me, but to explain the reckoning of your kin, I must bring up the events that led to our encounter as well; One miscreant found out about my plans on the way over, a certain...mind reader, whom has apparently made a habit of reading minds out of sheer habit."

"..A minor psyker ability, to be sure. But a dangerous tool in the minds of the frivolous." As he made his quip, he flushed down the dry taste of his mouth with another bout of liquor, leaving me to relay the rest of the incident.

"Good choice words on you; The boy was a frivolous one, no guts but gluten with the ideas of heroism and right doing. He made it his instantaneous duty to try and apprehend me, before I could do anything. I suppose he thought the gap between my stature and his - particularly in the wingspan, moreso than height - would be enough to cull my efforts. I dabbed my weapon at him, and caused his arms to dislocate upon reach. You do not agitate a class member of the Old Gods, and he was quick to learn this as his arms were in a broken stretch, concerning both physical and figurative terms. As he beckoned an alternative, he attempted to rattle his third eye and give me a psychosis blast. With results. This succeeded in tearing my robes and puncturing a small dent near my liver region. I did not take such insolence lightly.

When I led my flock, I made my mentions abrupt, and with great volume. I assume you know of my abilities, as they've been described?"

"I have a faint recollection from a drunk. That is the best output I've received thus far, with many speculations cast between lunacy and barely palpable. Still, I'm not one to size down what I've not seen, so to set the record clean, explain it in your own terms, 'Sin Eater'. If you are completely honest, then your tone will bare the truth."

I nod, plainly. "The nagging guilt, if any, was that he was of a very young age, hardly out of his teens if not out of school. I do not favor taking the youthful, if I am noted to have any moral compass regarding my aggressors. I will admit that. However, standards are to be maintained. I came to the man as he whelped on his knees, trying to obliterate me. Failing. I went into his face, puckered my darkened lips to his own, and expelled a hardy amount of sin into his person as he began to squeal and berate testaments of denial into the air. I then ducked him into the ventilation shaft of the bar, as to avert public eye of the ordeal-"

There was a faint squint of the eyes, as the Astartes rolled his lips to curl into the lower portion of his mouth. "I'm sorry. You sound honest, I can hear that, but your use of vocabulary is losing me. You mean to say you...kissed him, on the mouth, then breathed the anti-equivalent of new life into his fluid systems? His lungs? I didn't know this ability was a thing...hmm."

He gives a slight huff, and slides off the bar counter, causing many wooden planks upholding it to simmer into dusty memorials of their former condition. He stands erect, and points a finger towards the hive of bitter snakes. "That. The... serpentines, lying in a crutch. I would like for you to further validate your claims of Sinful Mancing by demonstrating it to me in an audition."

My head aches, and my breath shows slight wince. "You are certain of this?"

"As certain as the bloody Corpse-Emperor guides his withered dreams across the materium, and certain as we will soon end those dreams in a forethought."

"Very well." I impede the territory of the serpentines, many lengthened by two meters and some lengthened to three. As my eyes chart them down, I could potentially scower over a four. Nonetheless, impressions go a long way. I tote the churning bell, and the largest load of them all is levitated and paralyzed of all control. I bring the snake to my mouth, it's jaw artificially pulled upwards, and the process begins. As my mouth waters and the force of sinful retribution tickles my body like an electric surge in the middle of frosty terrain, I release a copious load of blackened mulch, a pitch black stream of falling fog. It penetrates the snake, as he turns black in the face, soon black around the underbelly and the tail until you could almost mistake it for a burn victim from a mile away. As I release the varmint, it quivers in a twitchy motion, flat on it's face and forever cursed with a boding that will never quite feel right in it's primordial essence ever again.

All this is congratulated by the clapping of the Iron Warrior, as he gives a short chuckle. I don't bother to see the reaction - for me, the Astartes are as cold and unyielding to nature as can be intended. I do give the remark of an eyebrow raise, half-handedly charting my head to the side.

"Ah, forgive. I've had the mental picture of you doing that to a certain yellow clad ragamuffin two times my height slash bulk, and four times as weak."

"This Corpse-Emperor?"

"No, someone a bit /more/ personal, if you could imagine."

I pivot back to the safety of the chair, before the snakes get the distinction that maybe I'm ready to take another.
As I sit down, I resume my speech.

"Right. As I ducked him into the ventilation, there were many bloody turnarounds. Leg kickings, mostly. Some were missed, others reached the outer rim of my stomach. I eventually had him subdued for all of ten seconds, before leaving his body to spasm in the shaft. That's when I dropped down from the ceiling, and first noticed the Astartes lounging in the corner, whom I believed gave me the first glare. I didn't have time to explain things, much less in detail, so I simply told him to turn the other cheek or be subject to the consequences. Then I followed up by asking if he knew where the Bartender went off to.." I pause, as he seems to patiently wait for a moment to interject. So I let him.

"Deflect your bluff if you must, but from what information I've gathered; you've threatened an Astartes, of all men? That crosses the border between inane and utter stupidity. Even if you are a match for him, I can attest - as one myself - that any given threat will not repel them, but instead have them challenged. We do not shake challenges when they are presented, and thus all threats are acted upon - from heavy ultimatums to light commentary that could be rounded up to pure musing - through one standard or another. Let alone the poor strategy to assume he was bothered by the happenstance in the first place; You should have asked for the whereabouts of your hunt, without the additional comment beforehand, then evacuate the area. If he attempted to confront you over the murder of the psyker, THAT should have been where the aggression began."

At first, I'm at a loss. He has truth in his vowels, in the respect that I was a bit battered to even insist hostility during a crucial mission. But then I take a breath, and start to defend myself. I curl up my fingers, eye up the Marine in a semi-menacing way, careful not to irk him.

"Is it so that I was hasty to give an assurance of defense against the Astartes, or is it so that the Astartes are hasty to put forth a solid image of themselves? I have been in this world for quite some time, in the way that I can tell from your voice that you haven't. We have housed many of the feeble giants, power armor or no, and subsequently have had time to experience them. Much time, at that. And the results were highly varied. There were those that sought to the immediate destruction of extraterrestrial origin with much less than a public wager, as have there been those that have claimed serfs over the duration of their time with no free liberties to give discussion to the matter. There have also been those that have compromised diplomatic situations with the use of a toting gun, and those who have forcefully made themselves ruling bodies. I can get behind that the stigma is not shared by all, but that is the point in itself; We, the people who are NOT Astartes, are very unfamiliar to an entity such as yourself. We do not know which pray to life and which bode to death.
For all my training in my position as Doff of the Angra Om Ya, I have been trained to make my decisions based around the circumvent of
the current environment. For me, the Astartes remind me of a frenzied herd of bulls with half the population devoured by mutated rot. With that comparison in mind, some are friendly and some are hostile- You cannot differentiate between the two unless you ARE one of the two, so despite the fact, you have to let it be known that if they ARE hostile, they will be met with force. That is my stance. And I will not repent for it."

I take no more deep breaths as I reach for the finale, the remaining words to prove what comes of his attitude towards me.

"When the Astartes approached me soon after that, we were provoked and began to fight with tactics and girth. The battle reigned until it became evident one was to be left standing. I'm sure you've heard a description of the attacks that followed, so I will preface none of it. I will only give you what you want, and reiterate; Yes, I killed your brother, your fellow Iron Warrior, for he put me in a position where I could not draw a stalemate. At the end of the road, it was a question of salvation, and I sought to answer as any living organism would plead, by retaining the last breath. And thus, I delivered. Take that for what you will."

The moment became tense, with the coating smell of mildew brewing in the background. Now that I've noticed, most of the snakes are starting to migrate out. Not a good thing. I sure hope they're leaving because of our tension...because if not..
I can't worry about that now.
As we give eachother a stare, with everything all sorted away, I'm reminded of a certain Johnny Cash classic, iconic classic.
And it burns, burns burns. This transaction itself burns twice as bright, with the whick melting at a frantic pace. I'm fairly surprised he wasn't anticipating to kill me from the beginning. Seeing his stoic eyeline now, it's obvious what the remaining intent must be.
He raises up his fist.
He raises up his fist, and in response, I click my thumb against the faded paint of my bell. So be it, if this was led to an immanent brawl, I will either leave with dignity or another sacrifice to my gods. I am ready.
And just a single second before I flaunt and wreak havoc upon the Astartes, I hear the sound of a fist crossing over a breast plate, and stare up to find him with his arm crossed, looking at me in a somewhat respectable manner;

"...Iron Within, Iron Without." He says, his voice a lot more sequenced, planned even. "Cherished history is history still, and by that accord, I should not be so mournful of it. I can see it now that neither you, nor the Astartes, were fighting as adversaries but rather on the guild of confusion. I should not fault a then follower of the Corpse Emperor to choose unsound battles on misguided choice, nor should I fault the mistake of an outsider to stake his claim lest bad things were to go array. I forgive you, and I forgive him as well."

I straighten my necked shirt, a small bead of sweat rolling as delicately as roasted grease down my back. I try to act professional despite all this. The Iron Warrior puts his mask back on, the captain is shielded once more. As he does so, I'm in a private awe. This being, seconds ago, was not much more than a mere human with converse, despite his girth, his height, his prowess. And more importantly, his mercy. He had mercy, something I had not noticed with much Astartes as of late. He appears to stand back up, and dust himself off...then there's a collateral boom in the far reaches of the icy valley, and it gets both of our attention.

We walk steadfast out into the openness, through the broken doors. And we see it for what it is. The spiraling chunks of metal satellites bursting into the ground very close to our position, only hundreds of miles apart from us instead of thousands. They appear to seeth with these beings of hive mentality, flying close to the populated towns that dare not move to the observing plateau. Fools. We can hear their screams, or their echos. The vibrations briefly touch on the blades of remaining grass, causing a slight shift in focus. And as this occurs, all of it in carnage, I hear a fond laughter besides me. A chuddy vox number.

I turn to question him. "How odd. You showed mercy with such emphasis in the pub, yet now you let out a laugh at others misery? That is bizarrely curious, at least."

He turns his head, gives a bit of a confused tone. "What? Oh. Well, you know these lands better than me. Surely you're aware things like this happen all the time, too much to be funny. I'm not scoffing at their misery in specific- I'm only laughing because I now get the joke."

"You find something humorous about this?" I meagerly respond, though it only sounds it because the air has taken my breath multiple times this day.

He then gives a full turn to me, body to body. Front to front; "It goes something like this. Today, a man walks into a bar with qualms. Bitterly so, at that. He walks in with a man he assumes to be a dullard, who has killed his brother in cold blood, under the note of a sour drunk from out the corner. As he lays the talk on him, they converse and then he later realizes through two choice explanations that it was derived off a misunderstanding. They begin to shake hands, metaphorically, when all of a sudden there's a bashful earthquake rippling the land, and it turns out it's about to be decimated by powerful forces. But the man finds irony in this. He turns to the fellow, smaller than he and a bit more worse for wear. He says to him; 'Funny, eh? Seems my qualms have been put to rest, just by the land is about to be put to rest by it's qualms!"

I can't help but smile at that. It's a bit funny, but mostly ironic as he said. And he's not wrong, either; The land before is crumbling harshly, you can perceive more of the spiraling junk spawn crashing into the ground like orcas into the ocean, and you can see them releasing patches and patches of harshly picked debris with bugs dipping out of it and into the stratosphere, invading towns and causing a retribution, a panic, among-st the villagers. The irony is thick. That's as much as I can say on the matter. So with that in mind, I see what other things he has to say. We are far enough away from the distant threat to actively ensue harmful events from it, if for a time.

"...The only thing I have left to fathom, is what to do next. I've been searching for you, months. I count the days, and the weeks, and the minutes that I've spoken to find you, and I realize I've left nothing open for the plans after. Most Astartes have gone extinct, due to suspicion and general infighting, so they are mostly a defunct option for fighting, or joining forces. I have nothing to fight for in this land that will count, save for the occasional Imperium filth that lurks among us, and the wild beasts. And the aggressors, the shooters, the agitators. This is the work of an officer wringing petty despots, however, and I surmise with the number of those here it would get quick soon enough. Would it be worth it?"

It takes me a minute to find my response, and I say it slowly. Processing it. "Perhaps, for the time being, instead of hunting me, you can hunt with me. I have some errands that would be most suitable for your services, regardless of whether or not you bring faith towards them. If it turns out you're against the notion, you can try your option too. That's as much as I can offer you."

Of course, there's a final bit of hesitance. He's standing there, taking in the air with his goliath stature. For a good ten minutes, we watch the shifting and molting of the long panned attacks and revolts, and repeats of the attacks and revolts. I like to imagine we are equally in a period of confusion. For him, it's probably the coming of the alien beasts, whom have been expected for some time. For me, it's considering his alternatives. Had things gone his way from the start, would I have been shoved six feet under? Or would I sizzle with open guts under the cold, cold sun? I don't know the future, I am no seer.

He responds, briefly adjusting his vox. So it was just untangled.
"I do not know what kind of person you are, Cottonwolf, and thus I cannot wholesomely say that you are someone I'm particularly in favor of following. Though you have got my musing and admiration, knowing you is a different tactic. I will say this, though;"

He again crosses his arm, but inverts the direction of his sleeve. For a second, I assume this is a backwards image akin to turning a cross upside down, a negative symbol. But it appears not to be, as he talks with the same diligence he had before, leaving me to believe he merely poised it downwards to conserve. "Iron Within, Iron Without. You remain both allusive, and yet, my only true link and connection to this land through the perils I went through to search for you - quite a story if you're interested. With that in mind, I would consider our meet a sign of progress, and to simply back away after spending much resources striving to meet your acquaintance, though intended for one true meeting, that would be very detrimental to the path that I've paved. To wax poetic; I'd rather enter a dirty slum with a familiar asset, rather than a seeming oasis with my being open to that of which I cannot expect. And besides all that, there's no where left for me to go."

As my composure is set into place, I come up to the Astartes, and present the common gesture of a handshake. He accepts. I begin the first vow.

"I give you a hardy, mutual indoctrination into the services of the Angra Om Ya, though in service and not in preach nor loyalty. D'iagath mahnth teemnon-tava gcroven. May we both have a boon to this encounter."

And he makes his own vow. "From Iron, cometh Strength. From Strength, cometh Will. From Will, cometh Faith. From Faith, cometh Honour. From Honour, cometh Iron. This is the Unbreakable Litany, and may it forever be so."

And as a final forward, as the sky turns red with the blood of airborne virus in the backdrop, we head over into the deserted, valley boonies.

- The End -